Apigenin is a flavonoid of low toxicity and multiple beneficial bioactivities. Published reviews all focused on the findings using eukaryotic cells, animal models, or epidemiological studies covering the pharmacokinetics, cancer chemoprevention, and drug interactions of apigenin; however, no review is available on the antimicrobial effects of apigenin. Research proves that dietary apigenin passes through the upper gastrointestinal tract and reaches the colon after consumption. For that reason, it is worthwhile to study the potential interactions between apigenin and human gut microbiota. This review summarizes studies on antimicrobial effects of apigenin as well as what has been reported on apigenin and human gut microbiota. Various levels of effectiveness have been reported on apigenin's antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic capability. It has been shown that apigenin or its glycosides are degraded into smaller metabolites by certain gut bacteria which can regulate the human body after absorption. How apigenin contributes to the structural and functional changes in human gut microbiota as well as the bioactivities of apigenin bacterial metabolites are worth further investigation.

Quercetin is one of the most abundant polyphenols found in fruits and vegetables. The ability of the gut microbiota to metabolize quercetin has been previously documented; however, the effect that quercetin may have on commensal gut microbes remains unclear. In the present study, the effects of quercetin on the commensal gut microbes Ruminococcus gauvreauii, Bifidobacterium catenulatum and Enterococcus caccae were determined through evaluation of growth patterns and cell morphology, and analysis of genetic expression profiles between quercetin treated and non-treated groups using Single Molecule RNA sequencing via Helicos technology. Results of this study revealed that phenotypically, quercetin did not prevent growth of Ruminococcus gauvreauii, mildly suppressed growth of Bifidobacterium catenulatum, and moderately inhibited growth of Enterococcus caccae. Genetic analysis revealed that in response to quercetin, Ruminococcus gauvreauii down regulated genes responsible for protein folding, purine synthesis and metabolism. Bifidobacterium catenulatum increased expression of the ABC transport pathway and decreased metabolic pathways and cell wall synthesis. Enterococcus caccae upregulated genes responsible for energy production and metabolism, and downregulated pathways of stress response, translation and sugar transport. For the first time, the effect of quercetin on the growth and genetic expression of three different commensal gut bacteria was documented. The data provides insight into the interactions between genetic regulation and growth. This is also a unique demonstration of how RNA single molecule sequencing can be used to study the gut microbiota.

Apigenin is a major dietary flavonoid with many bioactivities, widely distributed in plants. Apigenin reaches the colon region intact and interacts there with the human gut microbiota, however there is little research on how apigenin affects the gut bacteria. This study investigated the effect of pure apigenin on human gut bacteria, at both the single strain and community levels. The effect of apigenin on the single gut bacteria strains Bacteroides galacturonicus, Bifidobacterium catenulatum, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, and Enterococcus caccae, was examined by measuring their anaerobic growth profiles. The effect of apigenin on a gut microbiota community was studied by culturing a fecal inoculum under in vitro conditions simulating the human ascending colon. 16S rRNA gene sequencing and GC-MS analysis quantified changes in the community structure. Single molecule RNA sequencing was used to reveal the response of Enterococcus caccae to apigenin. Enterococcus caccae was effectively inhibited by apigenin when cultured alone, however, the genus Enterococcus was enhanced when tested in a community setting. Single molecule RNA sequencing found that Enterococcus caccae responded to apigenin by up-regulating genes involved in DNA repair, stress response, cell wall synthesis, and protein folding. Taken together, these results demonstrate that apigenin affects both the growth and gene expression of Enterococcus caccae.

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As it does not require a central authority or the cooperation among multiple authorities, decentralized attribute-based encryption is an efficient and flexible multi-authority attribute-based encryption system. In most existing multi-authority attribute-based encryption schemes, a global identifier (GID) is introduced to act as the linchpin to resist collusion attacks. Because GID as well as some sensitive attributes used to apply for secret keys will lead to the compromise of user's privacy, some schemes towards solving these privacy issues have been proposed. Nevertheless, only the privacy of GID was considered in prior works. Recently in ESORICS 2014, Han et al. put forward a privacy-preserving decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption scheme in the standard model to address the additive privacy of attributes. In their work, a privacy-preserving key extract protocol is presented to protect both user's identifier and attributes. In this paper, we point out the security weakness of the scheme of Han et al. We present a collusion attack on their basic decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption scheme and additionally show that the privacy protection of attributes in their privacy-preserving key extract protocol cannot be provided. 1243 a security analysis and discussed two vulnerabilities of the scheme of Han et al. by presenting two attacks. The first is a collusion attack on their basic decentralized ciphertext-policy ABE schemes, and the second is an attack that allows the authority to recognize user's credentials, thus negating the protection of attributes. Consequently, it is still an interesting issue to construct a privacy-preserving decentralized attribute-based encryption scheme. APPENDIX A. DEFINITIONS OF DECENTRALIZED CIPHERTEXT-POLICY ATTRIBUTE-BASED ENCRYPTIONA decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption scheme is composed of the following five algorithms: Global setup . / ! GP The global setup algorithm takes in the security parameter and outputs global parameters GP for the system. Authority setup .GP / ! SK; PK Each authority runs the authority setup algorithm with GP as input to produce its own secret key and public key pair SK; PK. Encrypt .M; .A; /; GP; ¹PKº/ ! C T The encryption algorithm takes in a message M , an access structure .A; /, the set of public keys for relevant authorities ¹PKº, and the global parameters GP . It outputs a ciphertext C T . KeyGen.GID; GP; i; SK/ ! K i;GID The key generation algorithm takes in an identity GID, the global parameters GP , an attribute i belonging to some authority, and the secret key SK for this authority. It produces a key K i;GID for this attribute, identity pair. Decrypt.C T; GP; ¹K i;GID º/ ! M The decryption algorithm takes in the global parameters GP , the ciphertext C T , and a collection of keys corresponding to attributes, identity pairs all with the same fixed identity GID. It outputs either the message M when the collection of attributes i satisfies the access structure corresponding to the cip...

In this study, the effect of the flavanone naringenin on the growth and genetic expression of the commensal gut microbes, Ruminococcus gauvreauii, Bifidobacterium catenulatum, and Enterococcus caccae, was analyzed. Analysis of growth curves revealed that Ruminococcus gauvreauii was unaffected by naringenin, Bifidobacterium catenulatum was slightly enhanced by naringenin, and Enterococcus caccae was severely inhibited by naringenin. Changes in genetic expression due to naringenin were determined using single-molecule RNA sequencing. Analysis revealed the following responses to naringenin: Ruminococcus gauvreauii upregulated genes involved in iron uptake; Bifidobacterium catenulatum upregulated genes involved in cellular metabolism, DNA repair and molecular transport, and downregulated genes involved in thymidine biosynthesis and metabolism; Enterococcus caccae upregulated pathways involved in transcription and protein transport and downregulated genes responsible for sugar transport and purine synthesis. For the first time, changes in growth and gene expression for commensal gut bacteria in response to naringenin were documented.

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